Emma Goldman

a branch talk by Kathleen O'Kelly (1993?)

Emma Goldman was born in 1869 in a Jewish ghetto in Russia where her
family ran a small inn. When she was 13 the family moved to St
Petersburg. It was just after the assassination of Alexander II and
so was a time of political repression. The Jewish community suffered
a wave of pogroms. The severe economic hardship of the time meant
that Emma Goldman had to leave school after six months in St
Petersburg and work in a factory.

It was here that Goldman secured a copy of Cherychevsky's 'What is
to be done' in which the heroine Vera is converted to nihilism and
lives in a world of equality between sexes and co-operative work. The
book offered an embryonic sketch of Goldman's later anarchism and
also strengthened her determination to live her life in her own way.

At 15 her father tried to marry her off but she refused. It was
eventually agreed that the rebellious child should go to America with
a half sister to join another sister in Rochester. Goldman quickly
realised that for a Jewish immigrant, America was not the land of
opportunity that had been promised. America, for Goldman meant slums
and sweatshops where she earned her living as a seamstress.

What initially drew Goldman to anarchism was the outcry that
followed the Haymarket Square tragedy in 1886 in Chicago. After a
bomb had been thrown into a crowd of police during a workers' rally
for the 8 hour day. Four anarchists were eventually hanged. Convicted
on the flimsiest evidence; the judge at the trial openly declared;
"Not because you caused the Haymarket bomb, but because you are
Anarchists, you are on trial."

Emma Goldman had followed the event intensely and as the day on
the day of the hanging she decided to become a revolutionary. By this
time Goldman was 20 and had been married for 10 months to a Russian
immigrant. The marriage had not worked out so she divorced him and
moved to New York.

Here, she befriended Johann Most, the editor of a German language
anarchist paper. He quickly decided to make Goldman his protege and
sent her on a speaking tour. Most instructed Goldman to condemn the
in adequacy of a campaign for the eight hour day. Rather he argued we
must demand the complete overthrow of capitalism. Campaigns for the
eight hour day were merely a diversion. Goldman duly conveyed this
message at her public meetings. However, in Buffalo, she was
challenged by an old worker who asked "What were man of his age to
do? They were not likely to see the ultimate overthrow of the
capitalist system. Were they also to forego the release of perhaps
two hours a day form the hated work ? "

From this encounter Goldman realised that specific efforts for
improvement such as higher wages and shorter hours, far from being a
diversion were part of the revolutionary transformation of society.

Goldman began to distance herself from Most and became more
interested in a rival German anarchist journal 'Die Autonomie' Here
she was introduced to the writings of Kropotkin. She sought to
balance the inclination of human beings towards the socialsability
and mutual aid which Peter Kropotkin stressed with her own strong
belief in the Freedom of the individual. This belief in personal
freedom is highlighted in the story where Goldman was taken aside at
a dance by a young revolutionary and told it did not become an
agitator to dance. Goldman wrote "I insisted that our cause could not
expect me to behave as a nun and that the movement should not be
turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. I want
freedom, the right to self expression, everybody's right to
beautiful, radiant things."

In the early days Goldman supported the idea of propaganda by
deed. In 1892, together with Alexander Berkman she planned the
assassination of Henry Clay Finch, who has suppressed strikes in the
Homestead Pennsylvania factory with armed guards. She even tried
unsuccessfully to work as a prostitute to raise money for the gun.
They believed that by killing a tyrant, a representative of a cruel
system, the consciousness of the people would be aroused. This didn't
happen.

Berkman only managed to injure Finch and was sentenced to 22 years
in prison. Goldman tried to explain and justify the attempted
assassination insisting that true morality deals with the motives not
the consequences. Her time in post-revolutionary Russian meant that
she re-assessed this belief that the end justifies the means but I'll
come to that later.

Her defence of Berkman made Goldman a marked woman and her
lectures were regularly disrupted by the authorities. In 1893 she was
arrested for allegedly urging the unemployed to take bread 'by force'
and was given a year in Blackwells Island penitentiary.

She was imprisoned a second time for distributing birth control
literature , but her longest sentence resulted from her involvement
in setting up 'No Conscription' leagues and organising rallies
against the first world war. Goldman and Berkman were arrested in
1917 for conspiring to obstruct the draft and given two years.
Afterwards they were stripped of their citizenship and deported along
with other undesirable 'Reds' to Russia. J. Edgar Hoover, who
directed her deportation hearing called her "one of the most
dangerous women in America."

The plus side to deportation meant that Goldman got a free ticket
to Russia where she was able to witness the Russian Revolution at
first hand. Goldman had been prepared to bury the hatchet of mans
conflict with anarchism in the 1st international and support the
Bolsheviks . However, in 1919 as Goldman and Berkman travelled
thoughout the country they were horrified by the increased
bureaucracy, political persecution and forced labour they found. The
breaking point came in 1921 when the Kronstadt sailors and soldiers
rebelled against the Bolsheviks and sided with the workers on strike.
They were attacked and crushed by Trotsky and the Red Army. On
leaving Russia in December 1921, Goldman set down her findings on
Russia in two works - 'My Disillusionment in Russia' and 'My Further
Disillusionment in Russia'. She argued that 'never before in all
history has authority , government, the state, proved so inherently
static, reactionary, and even counter-revolutionary. In short, the
very antithesis of revolution.

Her time in Russia led her to reassess her earlier belief that the
end justifies the means. Goldman accepted that violence as a
necessary evil in the process of social transformation. However, her
experience in Russia forced a distinction. She wrote "I know that in
the past every great political and social change, necessitated
violence....Yet it is one thing to employ violence in combat as a
means of defence. It is quiet another thing to make a principle of
terrorism, to institutionalise it to assign it the most vital place
in the social struggle. Such terrorism begets counter-revolution and
in turn itself becomes counter-revolutionary."

These views were unpopular among radicals as most still wanted to
believe that the Russian Revolution was a success. When Goldman moved
to Britain in 1921 she was virtually alone on the left in condemning
the Bolsheviks and her lectures were poorly attended. On hearing that
she might be deported in 1925, a Welsh miner offered to marry her in
order to give her British Nationality. With a British passport, she
was the able to travel to France and Canada. In 1934, she was even
allowed to give a lecture tour in the States.

In 1936 Berkman committed suicide, months before the outbreak of
the Spanish Revolution. At the age of 67, Goldman went to Spain to
join in the struggle. She told a rally of libertarian youth "Your
Revolution will destroy forever [the notion] that anarchism stands
for chaos." She disagreed with the participation of the CNT-FAI in
the coalition government of 1937 and the concessions they made to the
increasingly powerful communist for the sake of the war effort.
However she refused to condemn the anarchists for joining the
government and accepting militarisation as she felt the alternative
at the time was communist dictatorship.

Goldman died in 1940 and was buried in Chicago not far from the
Haymarket Martyrs whose fate had changed the course of her life.

Emma Goldman has left behind her a number of important
contributions to anarchist thought. In particular she is remembered
for incorporating the area of sexual politics into anarchism which
had only been hinted at by earlier anarchists. Goldman campaigned and
went to prison for the right of women to practice birth control. She
argued that a political solution was not enough to get rid of the
unequal and repressive relations between the sexes. There had to be
massive transformation of values and most importantly in womens
themselves . She argued that women could do this.

"First, by asserting herself as a personalities and
not as a sex commodity. Second, by refusing the right to anyone over
her body; by refusing to bear children unless she wants them; by
refusing to be a servant to God, the state, society, the husband, the
family etc, by making her life simpler, but deeper and richer. That
is, by trying to learn the meaning and substance of life in all its
complexities, by freeing herself from fear of public opinion and
public condemnation. Only anarchist revolution and not the ballot ,
will set woman free, will make her a force hither to unknown in the
World, a force of divine fire, of giving a creation of free men and
women."